The Perequal Project, financed within the context of the EU’s Equal Initiative, aims to contribute to the Italian agricultural machinery sector’s process of adaptation and development in response to changes in technology, economics, manufacturing, organisation and regulations which, if not confronted and controlled, could be transformed from growth opportunities to risk factors for the whole sector’s competitiveness.

The whole project’s structure is based on the awareness that it must contribute to connecting the sector’s development with UNACOMA’s role in activating, directing and governing the processes involved, both in the phase of concrete implementation and in the organising of results, services and system innovations that will stem from the project.

One unusual aspect of the Equal Initiative, compared to other EU programmes, is the way it finances experimentation and innovation to be carried out in networking contexts, that’s to say through the creation of special partnerships (called Development Partnerships) for the project’s duration, between organisms with different expertise and experience. The integration of these varied expertises and experiences is in fact considered an important part of fulfilling the aims of the proposed measures.

The project envisages two different formal levels of participation:

• I° level – Development Partnerships: set up between organisms whose role is considered essential to the project’s prospects of success (key organisms) and which operatively contribute to its implementation and benefit from the available community funding;
• II° level – Networks: including a wide group of organisms interested in the consequences and spin-offs of the overall project and which can contribute to further broadening the results of the Development Partnership’s actions, but without being eligible for direct access to EU funds (in practice a kind of support network).